Arize (Book 1): Resurrection
Page 3
Ian grinned at her. “You’re still beautiful. And you have a long weekend for me and the kids to spoil you rotten.”
“The only thing rotten will be their teeth after they eat all of that Easter candy.” Meg peered back at him. “You did go shopping, didn’t you?”
Although they didn’t attend church, they celebrated the holiday in typical American fashion—lots of sugar. Jacob was ten and too old for Easter egg hunts, but Ramona was eight and not as jaded yet.
“Jelly beans, robin’s eggs, two chocolate bunnies, and of course those evil yellow Peeps.”
“Nothing says the resurrection of Christ like stale marshmallow treats.”
“He died for our sins but came back because we kept on sinning. And I’ve got a few sins in mind for you. It’s been three weeks.”
She reached over and squeezed his arm. “Well, don’t get your hopes up. I feel as bad as I look.”
Ian looked at her with renewed concern. He pressed a wrist to her forehead. “No fever. Do you think it’s a cold?”
“It started at the field station. We’re all crammed on top of each other up there. It’s a breeding ground for bugs and viruses.”
“You could’ve told me before you let me kiss you.”
“You would’ve kissed me anyway, you fool.”
He grinned. “Yeah, probably.”
Meg switched on the radio, punching over to a news station. She’d felt disconnected from the real world at Toolik. The initial reprieve from constant strife and tragedy was welcome, but after a while, she felt left behind and that life was going on without her. However, the first two stories were about a devastating earthquake in Chile and problems at the Karachi nuclear power plant in Pakistan. That was enough to drive her back into blissful ignorance.
After the frigid weather of the Arctic Circle, Meg welcomed the spring warmth of North Carolina. But even the bright sun glaring through the windshield couldn’t drive away her chill. She hugged herself and shivered, anxious to be home. School let out early because of the holiday, and the kids would step off the bus in an hour. Just enough time for Meg to change into comfy Mom clothes.
But when they reached their two-story Colonial on a cul-de-sac just outside the city limits, Meg’s first task was to call BioGenix to see if her samples had arrived. According to the tracking data, the shipment wasn’t due until later that evening. Meg was relieved. Now she didn’t have to feel guilty about putting off work until tomorrow. She could rest, recover, and enjoy her family time.
“I cleaned the kitchen,” Ian said.
“That’s better than sex any day,” she joked.
“We’ll soon find out. You get to bed and when the kids get home, we’ll wake you up.”
“Deal.”
Meg showered away the miles, shivering as she toweled herself dry. She wiped the steam from the mirror with the ball of her fist. She squinted at her reflection and then pulled down on her eyelids. Spidery red veins blotched the white around her blue irises.
“You look like hell, honey,” she said to herself, repeating Ian’s remark. She felt more flushed than feverish, but she checked her temperature anyway. The thermometer read only half a degree above normal.
More like a cold than a flu, at least. She hoped some rest would allow her to enjoy the holiday with the family.
Her phone on the bedside table alerted her to a text message. She climbed beneath the sheets and propped herself up on the pillows before checking it. It was from the general address of the Toolik Field Station office and was blind carbon-copied.
You are receiving this message because you are currently on the active work roster of the Toolik Field Station.
We regret to inform you of a fatality on the station grounds. We’re withholding the name of the deceased until the next of kin are notified. An investigation is currently underway by the Major Crimes Unit of the Alaska State Troopers.
Additionally, the Troopers have organized a search for a missing person. Werner Dietmar Lang, 36, was last seen just before midnight of Wednesday, April 12. If you have any information regarding Lang’s whereabouts, please contact the field station office or the Alaska State Troopers.
The message concluded with contact information for the lieutenants handling the cases. Meg rubbed her mouth and unconsciously chewed the fingernail of her right index finger, a nervous habit she’d conquered after grad school.
Lang? She’d talked to him the day of his disappearance and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. She wondered about the fatality as well. The population of the field station was transient by nature, but she’d been there nearly two months and probably knew the victim.
From the way the text was phrased, the death seemed connected to Lang’s disappearance, but the scant details offered no insight. The field station was remote and the conditions harsh, and many of the researchers found themselves exposed to the dangers of the environment. Even with the risks mitigated by advanced technology and communications, accidents happened.
Unless this was no accident.
Lang wasn’t the type to take reckless actions. He was a creature of habit, setting goals and pursuing them with a rigid plan. That had led to his success in Meg’s field, and she harbored a grudging respect for him despite his repellent personality. Perhaps that very drive and discipline had fueled his advancement. After all, Meg put her family before her research, while Lang allowed for no other distractions.
She was here at home and he was still there, on the job.
She considered calling the trooper line but decided she had no critical information to offer. Surely plenty of people had encountered Lang since she’d departed. Instead, she wrote a brief email to the Toolik office, noting the last time she’d seen Lang.
The words blurred on her phone screen. Just typing the message made her tired. She sagged against the pillows and closed her eyes, sweat dotting her eyebrows.
Meg had no memory of falling asleep. Her turbulent dreams were shot through with red images. Although she wasn’t aware of it, the sheets knotted around her as she tossed and turned. Her breaths came in shallow gasps as the long-dormant viral infection found regeneration and renewal in her bloodstream.
In her dream, she was running through the snow-crusted tundra beyond the field station, searching for Lang. Shimmering crimson bands of aurora made a hellscape of the night sky. Her feet crunched through the frozen ground, fierce wind howling around her. A dark silhouette stood in the distance, faintly outlined against the bleak terrain.
She drew closer, her breath burning in her lungs and her pulse drumming in a wild, staccato rhythm. The figure waited in the desolate expanse, ice-covered mountains in the background glinting with the strange light. She needed to reach the figure—she was sure it was Lang, although the field station was nothing more than a muted glow behind her. He had no business out here in the harsh wilderness.
But neither did she.
Meg was gasping by the time she drew near enough to identify him. Her limbs were numb and she wanted to collapse, but she couldn’t veer from her mission. At last she reached him. He stood with his head down, the hood of his parka concealing his face. His arms hung limp at his sides, something dark dripping from his bare fingers.
She called his name and he didn’t respond. She drew closer, dragging her exhausted feet, until she was right in front of him. The wind caught the hood of the parka and lifted it a little. Something was wrong with Lang’s face.
She reached up to peel back the hood when he snatched at her with one hand, digging his fingers into her arm and yanking her against him. He lifted his head and she saw his mouth and screamed—
“Mom!”
When she opened her eyes, Jacob and Ramona stood beside the bed, eyes wide in alarm, Ramona shaking her awake. Ian stood behind them wearing a look of concern.
“Are you okay, hon?” Ian asked. “You were groaning in your sleep.”
Meg blinked away her bewilderment and forced herself to smile. “Just a dream.”
“I got a bunny,” Ramona said, thrusting the stuffed pink rabbit at Meg.
The glass eyes reminded her of Lang’s from her nightmare.
She shook her head to drive away the lingering cobwebs. This was family time, and damned if she’d let problems from four thousand miles away follow her home.
CHAPTER SIX
Captain S.H. Wilson of the Alaska State Troopers, Detachment D, didn’t know what to make of the mess that remained of the Norwegian student.
“Grizzly bear,” said Trooper J.L. Hollifield, pronouncing it “grizzluh bar.”
“The corpse looks mauled, but a bear usually doesn’t eat the flesh in an aggressive attack,” Wilson said. “Bears mostly attack when they’re cornered or their cubs are threatened. Besides, look around. There aren’t any bear tracks.”
“Damned hard to tell,” Hollifield said, craning his neck in each direction. “Whole place looks like a cherry slushy to me.”
Wilson would have to wait for forensics analysis, which meant a chopper ride with a team out of Fairbanks. That would take at least three hours. They were lucky enough that Wilson and Hollifield were patrolling the northern section of the district for stranded motorists on the Dalton Highway. Even though it was spring, a roadside breakdown could lead to death by exposure.
Poor Mr. Noordegard probably would’ve preferred such a fate. At least freezing to death would’ve been a slow ride into sleep rather than whatever carnage he’d endured.
Of course, the damage could’ve been inflicted while the man was already dead. The blood was well congealed and what was left of the remains was nearly frozen solid, so it was difficult to judge the state of rigor mortis.
The sun glinted off the patchy snow but did little to warm the air. The corpse lay a hundred yards beyond the field station, away from the lake and the road. The victim’s boot prints were clearly visible near the office and other buildings behind the field station, and there appeared to be another set of footprints mingled with them. The trail ended in a wide swathe of churned snow with the corpse bundled in the center like a wad of frayed paint rags.
Several of the field station researchers watched from afar, having been directed by Wilson to stay away from the possible crime scene. The many footprints had already disturbed the two sets they were trying to track back to their origin, making it impossible to tell how far Noordegard had been chased. The definition of the imprints definitely suggested frantic flight rather than a measured pace.
“Now we just need to track this other set of footprints,” Hollifield said, looking across the tundra where the wind had swept any clues into a vast expanse of glistening white.
“My guess is we either have a killer on the loose, or maybe a second victim,” Wilson said. “They could’ve both been running from the same thing.”
“You for sure it’s this Lang fellow?” Hollifield said.
“As far as we can tell, he’s the only one unaccounted for,” Wilson said. He dipped the brim of his Stetson toward the mangled corpse. “I’d be just as happy we don’t find him like this.”
“Me, too, Captain,” Hollifield said. “That’d mean we got us a killer that don’t leave no footprints.”
“Not much we can do with this body until Forensics gets here,” Wilson said. “Why don’t you go back and interview the civilians again? Maybe they will suddenly remember something that might help us.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to make a sweep and see if I can pick up another set of prints. We’ll conduct air recon when the chopper gets here.”
“Be careful. If that Lang fellow did this, he’s liable to try anything.”
Wilson patted the Glock 22 sidearm in its hip holster. “Our motto is ‘Loyalty, Integrity, and Courage.’ And this covers the ‘courage’ part.”
As Hollifield headed back toward the research station, Wilson had to remind him to veer outside the tracks to preserve the evidence. Hollifield was a solid trooper, especially in a crisis situation, but he wasn’t much for the finer points of investigative work. Wilson gave one last look at the corpse—bits of bone gleamed here and there under the unrelenting sun, huge chunks of flesh missing from the face, shoulder, and neck—and turned toward the mountains.
If Lang was out there, he didn’t have anywhere to hide. And he might already be dead from exposure.
As he walked across the tundra, he squinted against the wind. Even though the day was brilliantly clear and the sky was as blue as arctic water, fine needles of snow and ice blew in the air, stinging his cheeks. He fished his aviator shades from inside his coat pocket and pegged them into place, keeping one finger on the nosepiece to prevent the eyewear from whipping aloft.
As he searched, he reviewed what witnesses had told him about Lang. The man was a German who’d been granted dual citizenship due to his work as a scientist. Although he’d been described as aloof and cold—who wouldn’t be cold, working in this place?—there was nothing to indicate a propensity for violence. As far as anyone could tell, Lang didn’t even know Noordegard. They worked on separate research projects and thus studied and lived in quarters at opposite ends of the field station.
Their paths had probably crossed in the dining hall, but Lang reportedly liked to eat alone and usually before regular meal hours. Lang was something of a workaholic, what one bearded old fellow had dubbed “an arrogant prick,” but no one could remember any extended interactions between Lang and the young Norwegian. Much less any hostile encounters.
Wilson had responded to calls from Toolik before, usually for search-and-rescue missions when outsiders underestimated the terrain and climate as well as their own capabilities. His sense of the place was that it was like a college campus to the people housed there, most on stays of between a few weeks to a few months. Despite their dedication to the pursuit of knowledge, they were more like fellow vacationers than co-workers.
Wilson almost wished the two knew each other, and that maybe they’d had a dispute over a lady friend. A crime of passion was almost always easy to solve, because passion was stupid. But Lang would’ve had to muster a lot of passion to yank big hunks of meat out of the younger and stronger man. And judging from the ragged and scalloped edges of the flesh, Wilson was pretty sure a knife or ax wasn’t employed as the murder weapon.
That flesh hadn’t been cut from the body. It had been torn.
Wilson extended his search radius as he worked his way back and forth, moving ever closer to the distant mountains. He would never reach them before the helicopter arrived, so he contented himself with exploring the dried rills and shallow valleys where glaciers had long ago carved deep into the soil. He came to a dark crevasse in the ground where bleached bones lay scattered like tiddlywinks abandoned by a monstrous child.
This looked to be an animal den of some kind. He considered Hollifield’s “grizzluh bar” theory but this didn’t look like a suitable habitat for a large carnivore. Still, something had left those bones.
He stepped into the hollow where the rocks leaned together to form the den’s mouth. He hadn’t seen any need to carry a flashlight, given that it was early afternoon, but now he wished he’d been better prepared. He knelt and peered into the depths of the crevasse, then jumped with a start when his walkie-talkie squawked.
“Captain Wilson, you there?”
Heart pounding, he fished his walkie-talkie off his belt and keyed the mike. “Copy. What do you have?”
“A witness said Lang was acting kind of sick and spaced out last night,” Hollifield said. “Saw him at the dining hall tearing at his food, wiping sweat off his face, and generally looking all flushed and puny, over.”
Wilson was annoyed by his own fright. Courage indeed. “No crime in being sick, is there? Unless the Russians have crossed the
Bering Sea and taken over while I wasn’t looking.”
“Witness reported he smelled kind of funny, too, like he’d eaten some spoiled ham or something.”
“If we don’t nail him for murder, maybe we can hang a public-nuisance rap on him.”
“Sorry, Captain. Just thought you’d like to know. Find anything?”
“Nothing so far. Ten more minutes and I’m coming back in.”
“Copy that. Over and out.”
Wilson replaced his walkie-talkie and drew his Glock. If anything was sleeping in that den, the conversation would’ve awoken it. Wilson knelt again and peered inside.
Two glints of faint red light flashed and disappeared in the darkness.
Eyes?
Motto or not, he wasn’t in the mood to crawl into the den and look for Lang’s remains. The snow and frozen mud was disturbed around the mouth of the den, but he couldn’t tell how long ago the marks had been made. The erratic weather changes kept the environment in a constant state of flux.
Wilson debated backing away and letting the forensics unit turn up some clues. But Lang was still missing. Whether the man was a victim or a suspect, Wilson had a duty to find him. It wasn’t a job he would leave to others.
He edged closer to the fecund, moist air emanating from the den. “Lang?”
If Lang was armed, Wilson was a sitting duck. But Nordegaard hadn’t died by gunshot wound, and if Lang possessed some kind of blade or hand weapon, Wilson had the advantage of firepower. Something rustled inside the den, the noise barely perceptible over the wind.
“Come on out,” Wilson said. “I’m with the State Troopers.”
The two eyes flashed again and moved forward. Wilson could make out the crouching silhouette of a man just at the border of daylight.
“Nice and slow,” Wilson said, keeping his Glock lowered by his hip so as not to alarm the man.
Lang came out of the shadows and Wilson nearly dropped the pistol. The man’s face and parka were smeared with coagulated blood. His sickly eyes sported jagged red veins and his skin was sallow beneath the clotted gore that pocked his cheeks and forehead. Although he tried to stand, he listed to his left in an awkward crouch.